RELEASE: Report Highlights Community Role in Successful Immigrant Integration

September 20, 2011

PRINT:
• 
SHARE:
• 
• 
• 
• 

Contact: Madeline Meth
Phone: 202.741.6277
Email: mmeth@americanprogress.org

Read the report.

Washington, D.C. — Today the Center for American Progress released, “All Immigration is Local: Receiving Communities and Their Role in Successful Immigrant Integration,” a groundbreaking report that outlines how receiving communities—the places, along with their residents, in which newcomers settle—can overcome the challenges of immigrant settlement and proactively bridge the gap between natives and newcomers.

“As our country becomes more diverse, it is imperative that receiving communities explore and adopt strategies to ease the integration of newcomers for the benefit of all,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, Director of Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress, during an event marking the release of the report.

The report provides a set of guidelines to help receiving communities identify programs they can emulate and build on. It identifies four key strategies for receiving communities:

1. Encourage leadership to address the changes take place locally and to manage them effectively
2. Foster contact between immigrants and the native born
3. Build partnerships between state and local governments and new residents
4. Reframe the issues to counter misconceptions about immigrants

The report also gives recommendations for expanding on this work by encouraging national, state, and local policymakers, as well as philanthropic and civic actors, to focus more attention and resources on immigrant-receiving communities.

Read the report.

To speak with CAP experts about this issue, please contact Raúl Arce-Contreras at rarcecontreras@americanprogress.org or 202.478.5318.

###